Bugs and Importance

Lately there was an update to the bug system and I'm starting to believe that all the bugs got Priority High. I've got one bug that's almost a year old that I've commented on trying to get it bumped up for someone to take a look at.

How do bugs get an importance level? Is there a way to get them bumped up? I've got multiple bugs for skills that don't work correctly in Shaman that have been there for almost a month now. Does active project coding get prioritized before bugs so basically they are looked at in free time of projects? I'm really starting to get disheartened at the lack of bugs getting attention. I actually know several players that now bug the same thing hoping to move it up in the chain to get a look at. What is the best way for players to make these get looked into?

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Comments

Forums are good way to be heard, but I'd straight message admins about this. Forums are not official way for admins to look up what they can do to improve, but most of the admins (if not all) reads forums and part of threads. But yeah, I'd just in-game message admins about the situation. Usually they answer fast and you'll get your answer to the problem or what ever bugs your mind.

Internally, we now have 5 priority levels. Newly filed bugs are given the default priority of 'major' (and this was grandfathered onto most existing bugs from the old tracking system). This is actually the middle of the road for our priorities (trivial, minor, major, critical, blocker).

Multiple people bugging the same issue doesn't raise its priority, and in most cases, the multiple bugs are merged into one report. Multiple people filing a bug with different amounts of context CAN help in diagnosing and correcting the issue (but all players should strive to include as much detail as possible in their reports. See HELP BUGS for some guidelines).

If you wish to contact the administration about a filed bug, the best way to do so is via in-game messages. Emails are also a perfectly good option (eoghan@imperian.com, jeremy@imperian.com).

I won't go into a great deal of detail about how we prioritize coding time or bug fixing, because there are a lot of factors not all of which are completely measurable. The complexity of the bug (both in how it is reproduced and in the code surrounding it) and its impact are key deciding factors on whether a bug is dealt with immediately or put into the queue. Available coder time is also a major consideration.

From my own perspective, the hardest part of bugs is figuring out what the bug actually is. A lot of bugs that we get are edge cases, and often don't give enough detail for us to replicate. The easiest bugs are actually the ones that cause the most damage. It's pretty easy to track down what is causing a bug if it is happening every three seconds.

Now that doesn't really help you very much, but it does give you some insight into what I'm thinking when I am going through bugs. Imperian is not some monolithic corporation of people with an explicit policy saying bugs of X type must be fixed within Y days. For the most part its Jeremy, Eoghan and me fixing the code bugs and Druu helping with the game bugs. And at the same time we all have things we're trying to do to add things to the game. So if I only have 30 minutes at the moment to fix bugs, I'm more likely to prioritize those bugs I know how to create.

If you think something is really wrong, message or email one of us. My suggestion would be to try to find which of us announced the game mechanic that you have an issue with. If you message me with a relic problem I'm more likely to know how to fix it than if you message me a promotion problem, for example. If you don't know, then just try any one of us and we'll typically point you in the right direction.

Also, if you do notice a bug hasn't been touched in a while it's not a bad idea to add a comment stating its still a problem and the commands/steps to reproduce the issue. Maybe do that before you message us with the bug number. And please give us rep numbers, bug numbers, room numbers, etc as those can really speed things up.

Finally, one thing to note with skill bugs is that many players bug things that they don't agree with. If you don't think that something _should_ work a certain way, I'd encourage you to ask people on the forums if they have the same view point. Skill changes are done through class leads in no small part because people can discuss class lead requests. I'm not saying that's the case with your bugs (one way or the other as I don't have your bugs firmly in mind), but the attention it draws on the forums generally does help if people all agree it is a bug and not a feature.

@Dec - the temperment we've been more or less conditioned into by administrative actions in the past is "if you're not sure its intended behaviour, bug it" - because if you don't bug it, more often than not it's come back on people that they were "exploiting" something because they did not report it. While there's certainly some of those people who have been intentionally abusing the mechanics in question, I also know a few people I have spoken to who have been sanctioned for something they did not mean to exploit. I always advise people, if for no other reason than to cover their a**, to err on the side of reporting a bug, issuing something that affects them directly, or messaging Jeremy or you all. It's better to be in communication than to not be if there's doubt. It's also better to abstain from something that seems like a bug or exploit than to continue using it.

You mentioned it's difficult to replicate many bugs, what can we do in a bug report better, compared to the existing reports, to make it easy on you? Are the examples of things done in bug reports which make it difficult? I always try to include steps to replicate since I program in my day job, but there's usually information we can provide that is more useful, that someone with knowledge of the codebase would know to ask for but us users/customers/whatever wouldn't. It's certainly the case for my software when I support it.

There's no problem with CYA bug reports, but it is helpful to know if you're not sure if it's a bug or intended behavior. If it is intended behavior and you don't say otherwise we may interpret it as an idea and move it into that category for future consideration. If it involves credits, OOC money, or generating things in game, definitely bug it. In fact, if you think you've found a repeatable way to get something for nothing (especially credits) I'd probably issue yourself over it. But again, a quick "not sure if bug or not" goes a long way.

Personally, I would love to have the exact commands that you need to replicate a bug. Using the commands is (to me) more useful than even mentioning the skill names because the code is organized by command, not skill name. Logs are fine to link to, but please highlight the exact line that didn't work the way you expected. Also great if I can see an echo of what you are sending to the game and not just the shortcut aliases that you've made.

Now I'm not saying you have to do all this to submit a bug, but it is appreciated when you do so.